


Lost souls in revelry

by FalseConfidence



Series: Lost Souls [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Book of Nile, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Mission Fic, POV Nile Freeman, Post-Canon, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:21:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26181079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FalseConfidence/pseuds/FalseConfidence
Summary: It takes a hundred years for Sebastien Le Livre to slip back into the fold, another one hundred for Nile to realise the weight of her immortality, and yet another for her to love him.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Lost Souls [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941931
Comments: 94
Kudos: 412





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Why is it I re-watch this film yet again, go on tumblr and find that I can adore pretty much any combination of these idiots. A friend sent me the Book of Nile tag to look up and the pair are now stuck in my head... so yeah, here we go :)
> 
> I just love the idea of Nile taking on the mantle of Boss because Andy left it for her and around this responsibility trying to find her place in the world and where Booker might find his place in that.

It takes a hundred years for Sebastien Le Livre to slip back into the fold, another one hundred for Nile to realise the weight of her immortality, and yet another for her to love him.

\---

Conquered lands are not patriotic.

Nile knows this, as they take on the defence of a small settlement while they evacuate, based in Old Russia on the eve of it’s demise, the wild lands of the once mighty country festering and oozing pockets of filth, small bands of mercenaries fleeing the army’s rampaging from the West and engaging in the timeless act of pillaging and destruction.

Conquered lands are not wealthy.

It’s a poor job, one that’s barely going to put a dent in the cost of supplies, weaponry, ammunition, the sheer difficulty of travelling to such a remote location without alerting the invading forces. But they have enough money in the coffers to last them centuries and Nile has never been able to ignore the terrified whispers on the wind when a young boy, barely more than a stripling, caught her forearm a hundred miles out and begged for help with nothing more than a few coins tucked up his sleeve.

Conquered lands are not balanced.

They’re outnumbered, outgunned, meet hostiles at every turn as they engage in three long days and nights of near constant engagements, and Nile has barely kept track of her team. The clouds have been heavy, weighted down with thick flakes of snow, and the threat of a storm is realised with a cold snap that takes Nile's breath away and narrows her field of vision to barely a few feet in any direction, the wind blocking out nearly all sound.

Conquered lands are not safe.

Quynh is with them, and it’s the ferocity of her soul that’s keeping them ahead so far, a barely visible brush stroke, a winter night winding through the trees on a ghostly breeze, dropping bodies with her sword, her crossbow, her bare hands, and on one memorable occasion the curve of her canines as she tears and rents and ruins.

Nile has never been so grateful to have a demon at her back.

 _Finally_ , the last caravan departs and they’re simply buying as much time as they can that they might get even a few days more before the inevitable catches them. Nile’s fuelled by sheer adrenaline and the tiny faces peeking out of the canvas as they’re wheeled away, terror effusing the air long after they disappear.

Booker’s at her side, moves in weaving circles to cover her blind spots, firing into the unknown as she loads her last clip, roars for a retreat, hears Nicky’s voice somewhere in the distance confirm and she knows that Joe’s safe then. There’s no checking where Quynh is, and she should be alarmed that her friend might fall foul of a lucky hit, but she’ll have to pray that somewhere in the blizzard Quynh is slinking away.

Or at least continuing her bloodshed safely.

How everything goes quite so awry, quite so quickly, Nile couldn’t begin to tell you, honestly, between taking a volley of bullets to the gut, dying in Booker’s arm as it hooks around her chest to haul her backwards as he lays down cover fire with his sidearm, she doesn’t think of much other than _fucking shit that hurts_.

Even after all of this time she can still have all of the moisture wicked out of her mouth at the sheer depth of pain when it rears its ugly head.

It’s a stumbling shamble as they retreat, her feet are numb as the snow seeps into her clothing, leeches all of the heat from her body until her aim is awry and nothing will steady her damned hands.

“ _Merde!_ ” Booker hisses as something tears through his shoulder hard enough he jerks away from her, a lucky shot, and for a terrifying second Nile thinks she’s lost him in the vicious swirling carnage around her, nothing but white so bright that she feels blinded in it.

A body hurtles into hers while she’s distracted, a rookie error, and Nile struggles as the assailant tries to bury a knife into her abdomen, only because she’s still glancing around for Booker. Something low and primal seeds itself in her belly as he’s lost to her, and she caves, swipes the blade from her boot as she drops her entire body down bringing the mercenary with her, rolling and sinking it into the exposed sliver of neck displayed.

She can barely register the mess at her knees as she rises, the world around her reducing to the end of her fingertips as she stretches them out ahead of her. Ears popping like in a post-flight descent, everything blurry in sound, and she’s incensed at herself for leaving it so late to call them back, risking everything to give a few precious miles to those fleeing.

It’s a mistake, just another in a line of many since she’s taken this title, this daunting role as their leader and one she knows, without a doubt, that Andy would have made the same choice were she still with them.

She almost fires as slick, wet gloves close around her arm, curls tight over her bicep, anchors them together and she’s never been so relieved to catch sight of murky blue eyes, breath crystallising in between them, and she’s following as Booker pulls her along with him.

They’re pursued for what feels like hours, and Nile goes through the last of her ammo before resorting to picking out individual bodies with a methodical precision, the bandolier still hanging across her shoulders nearly empty when she thinks that they might be finally clear.

“Where are we going?” She shouts over the deafening storm while it seems to spike with a vengeance.

“Trust me.” He bellows back and she does.

So she follows.

Simple as that.

Booker doesn’t let her down when they seem to practically fall through the door of a rundown cabin, swivels to slam the door shut behind them and dragging a small wooden table to block it, as if it’ll make much of a difference when the place is barely held together beyond maybe with the luck of a prayer from one more devout than she’s been in many a lifetime.

“Status.” She demands around clattering teeth that make her whole face ache.

“Good, you?”

“Okay.” She says because none of this is good, but they’re also together and that brief swirling moment they were apart is still heavy at the base of her burdened spine. “What is this place?”

“Old safe house.”

Nile frowns, she’s meant to know about all of these places, and Booker reads the frustration like she’s an open book. Which at this point she might as well be with him.

“We abandoned this one way back in the nineteen-thirties. It was compromised and nobody wanted to risk coming back to clear it out when there wasn’t anything important in here.” He pauses by the only small window, glass thankfully still intact and peers out of it, the sheer bulk of him, shoulders hunched and still broad enough to block the little light coming in. “There might still be some blankets at the end of the bed.

She tugs at the crate he indicates, thinks absurdly of the quality craftsmanship that the hinges only scrape with a low sound until she sees the carved initials under the lid. It would stand that Nicky’s sturdy hands could fashion something that might last the test of time.

“Did you see if the others made it out?”

“Couldn’t see shit in all of this.” Booker says, bites the end of a glove and slides it off so he can rummage in one of his coat’s inner pockets until he retrieves his handheld and gives up after only a few seconds when it’s clear that he’s going to have no luck. “I doubt we’ll get any signal until the sky clears, and there’s no point in going back out there. We’ll get turned around before we get ten feet.”

He’s right, they’re not getting out of here any time soon, and although it feels terribly inadequate, the cabin is a better bet than stumbling about the Russian wilderness during a whiteout when nightfall is less than an hour away. She’s just going to have to pray that Nicky and Joe got out in time and made it to their original, planned safe house.

Quynh will probably still be out there earning the _Baba Yaga_ the children, and quite a few adults, whispered behind cupped hands. If not… well Nile will earn some choice titles herself to find the woman.

If it weren't such a thorn in her side, then Nile would find it funny that even now technology does not exist on the same plain as Mother Nature in all of her glory.

“We’re better off waiting for this storm to break. We’ll rest tonight and then get out the first sign of light, hopefully they’ll register in before then.”

Her bodies wracked with the sort of shuddering that has her brain aching, and when she pulls out a couple of blankets that, although reeking of mould and god knows what, are still dry it's like finding that small fleck of gold in the pan.

There’s three cots to choose from and she takes the one farthest from the door, the soundest, and if she’s honest, smells the least like somebody has died on it anytime recently. There’s rations in her pack, and she considers wolfing something down as she dumps it on the floor, but what her body really needs is a break, to rest for a good few hours and then she can assess the situation. She takes the worst of her outer layers off, knowing she’ll be worse off if she lies down in the sodden clothing, and there’s no way she’s risking trying to start a fire in the grate when she’s got no materials asides from a few kitchen chairs, and after centuries without use, it’ll probably just end up causing a downdraught.

Given that she’s had experience with both now, Nile is fairly confident in saying that she’ll take quite a few deaths over burning to a crisp.

Unless smoke inhalation will take her out first?

She considers it as she quickly encases herself in the blankets, thanks the lord for the creation of thermal underwear now she’s old enough to appreciate such delights, and then rolls into bed, toes clamping the blanket down tight.

“How long are you going to stand there?” She says when she realises that Booker’s not left his spot by the window.

He shrugs, and she realises with an annoyance that he has no intention of moving.

It’s not that she isn’t capable of gritting her teeth through the cold, it’s just that _why on earth_ would she endure such a thing when there’s a perfectly acceptable source of heat within reach.

That's all it is.

Truly.

“Come on, Book, we’re gonna be digging our way out of here, there’s nobody coming for us.”

He shifts from foot to foot, peering through the window at god knows what because Nile doubts he can see a foot from his nose. “It’s fine, I’ll take watch tonight.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“I’m happy to.”

Stubborn bastard. “It’s freezing Book, just get in the fucking bed before we both die of exposure.”

She holds an unquestionable authority between them all. He’s aware of it and has never shown any sign of chaffing under her command, and now is clearly not going to be the first time as he shuffles over, shucks off his coat and top sweater to join hers on the back of a rotting kitchen chair and awkwardly climbs onto the cot next to her. Then he fidgets constantly for the first few minutes and she’s about to kick his shin when he exhales roughly, and finally lies there stiff as a fucking board.

“You’d never have guessed that I looked like swiss cheese a few hours ago.” She jokes to try and ease the tension that’s hanging over them like a brittle crust of ice.

“That’s not funny.” His voice comes out thready and weak, eyes darting down to her waist. They’re distant, as if he’s caught in the memory of something haunting.

Nile isn’t sure what possesses her, reaches to clasp a hand around his wrist and tugs until his palm is pressed under the hem of her bloody sweater, the tip of his thumb grazing over her navel higher than she expects when she knows that he’s got such large hands.

“See, it’s completely healed. Nothing to worry about.”

He hums, swallows audibly, and… _Shit_. She hasn’t really thought this through. Nile can’t comprehend why it’s such a shock to her suddenly vulnerable system to have the knowledge that Booker’s touch in one format contrasts so greatly from another. He’s _warm_ , and it occurs to her as his hand stays there, pinpricks of heat rising under his touch, that she’s not treating this as an exercise in survival, in reassurance, but something else as he looks down at her with this terribly fond expression that she has no idea of how to unravel.

In this moment it’s Sebastien whose hair is ruffled, whose taken twice the bullets she has in order to shield her body as she choked on her own blood and then revived to return the favour, whose free hand is cradling the back of her neck and folding her up into the reassuring cage of his arms.

Nile feels this irrational desire to reach up and stroke the strands of hair falling across his eyes, push them back from his face and see what he’d do if she left her hand there.

Probably wince at the ice that’s caught under her nails… But he might not, and it’s that possibility that has her trapped in uncertainty.

In the end her eyes close between one breath and the next, once the residual adrenaline slips out of her bloodstream, once Sebastien starts stroking the nape of her neck, once she can hear his heart gently thudding beneath her ear as she rests her head on that firm chest, once she feels the press of his lips against the crown of her head.

It might be romantic, curled up around one another to keep the cold at bay through the night while the storm rages outside.

Probably.

If Nile isn’t sure that they _do_ die from bloody exposure at one point anyway.

\---

When Nile Freeman – who became Loire Freeman, who became Yenesei, who became Soca, who became _boss_ , who became so many names that when she finally comes back to Nile it feels like all that’s left of her has slipped away in the tributaries and rivers she’s stolen the names of, until she’s merged in the silt and left raw and exposed – looks back at that night she doesn’t see it as the first time.

There’s many beginnings, many endings, and her life is made of recollections, of shattered things, edges too crude and rough to be able to tell the complete truth. Though it would be a grave sin to lie and pretend that there isn’t pretty moments in time, reflections of the people she loves dappled across the surface and when she peers deeper she realises that quite rudely, Sebastien has burrowed his way under her skin waiting for her to purge him out.

Daring her to do so.

Nile almost does, but instead she examines the place he’s forged and realises with a small dose of fear that a whole new part of her has formed to accommodate him. She’s not finished yet, there’s still something new for her in this old world, strange and no less dangerous for it’s beauty, and her tired lungs heave and her heart starts to thump a little faster as she starts to think about loving him.


	2. Chapter 2

Drones, Nile quickly discovered in the early half of the twenty-first century, are the bane of her fucking existence. They’ve continued to be for the following two centuries and she suspects they’ll be continuing to piss her off for a long time yet.

“Nicky.” She murmurs.

“I’ve got it.”

There’s a distinct whistle and then Nile watches satisfied as the little disc tumbles from the sky with what she likes to think of as extreme vengeance. It’s a good shot, not his best by far, but that’s got to be at least a mile-and-a-half and barely the size of her skull.

She’s crouched in the dirt in Val d’Argent, Nicky sprawled at her side, both scowling up at the sky and trying to work out why of all the days it’s the one where they’re securing the last of the safe… cave, moving the vast collection of Andy’s treasures now that France is in the midst of its fourth civil war since she was born.

This is the day that the drones are out in fucking force.

“We doing alright guys?” She calls down the comm.

“How many statues can one woman have owned?” Comes Joe’s reply.

Then, before she can answer,

“Too fuckin’ many.”

Nile ignores his general griping in favour of her own cussing as she spies another disc whirling through the air.

“Twenty feet to your right.”

The retort shakes Nicky's shoulders under the soft grey of his t-shirt.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a marvellous shot Nicky.” She gently nudges his leg with her foot.

He smiles back, but it’s tired, like Nile is, full of too much withdrawn emotion, exhaustion limning the fine lines of his profile, and she reminds herself that they all need a break soon.

The world is going to shit, Old Russia is gone, nothing but pockmarks and craters and those still entrenched deeply enough in the old ways to know how to survive in the bedrock. Europe is a disaster that’d take her months to gain more than a cursory understanding of, The America’s are still split and warring with one another, and the fucking Brit’s have been suspiciously quiet for a year now, and isn’t that swell… Nile is going to have to scramble over those bloody border walls at some point and see what they’re hiding.

She’s almost three-hundred years old and she hates the world she lives in.

In dribs and drabs over the last few decades they have managed to smuggle out most of Andy’s belongings, the last material footprint they’ve left of her. Unfortunately, there isn’t a chance that they’ll get it all, and the knowledge of what she has to do, the jerrycan by her thigh, is weighing heavier on her than she’d like.

The scrape of something dragging across a truck bed, a quiet hiss of relief and Nile suspects that whatever had Joe grumbling is now safely aboard.

 _Crack_.

“Again?” She looks over her shoulder and sees Nicky shrug.

“At least it’s not the birds, Boss.”

There’s some talk in the few pockets of technological advancement still striving for innovation out there, of genetically hacking the DNA of pigeons, of creating a monster that’ll do as commanded, impossible to detect amongst the millions of aviary breeds in the sky.

The day it happens, Nile decides, is the one where she gives up and spends the rest of her years in the Arctic.

“I hate this decade.” She scowls. “It’s the worst by far.”

“You said that about the last six.” Nicky points out.

“And I meant it every time.”

“If you’ve got time to complain,” Joe’s voice comes across distorted then clearer as he gets closer, “then maybe you could come and give us a hand.”

“Now why would I do that.” She smiles sweetly as he and Booker stride over, sleeves rolled up above his elbows doing nothing for the sweat pouring out of them both. “What with the nice view I’m getting.”

Nicky doesn’t look up, but there’s a twitch to his lips. “Are you objectifying my husband?”

“I like to admire pretty things.” Nile challenges. “Are you objecting to my objectifying?”

“No, he deserves to be admired.”

Nile makes a retching sound as Joe preens, stretches his arms up to show the cut of his biceps. She finds it strangely difficult to look towards Booker then, catches him in her peripherals and struggles to state precisely why the wet part of his lips as he laughs, the shine of sweat on his skin, heat painting his cheeks pink, has her heart pounding like she’s a young girl in Chicago flushing before her first crush.

She’s three-hundred years old.

It’s unseemly.

Or so she tells herself.

\---

The second time she was in this cave, the bottom of her world had been whisked out from under her feet.

Nile Freeman wears the death of her mother, then her brother, then her first niece and on and on and on, each like bricks atop her lungs, and with every breath she can feel them crush her just a little more. She can only liken it to being held in chains, of being wreathed in flames and choking on the acrid smoke of her own annihilation

It would stand to reason, therefore, that if she can survive outliving her own blood, then she can weather the loss of an old god when the time comes seventy-years down the line.

Andy’s loss is destructive in a way that Nile could never have predicted.

She’s been dutifully preparing before conscious thought, taken each staggering step to make sure that she’s ready for this implosion from the day in Merrick’s lab as she stared lifelessly up at Nile before rising like the angel of death and fighting her way out of that hellish lab with a ferocity that rallied a broken team.

Andromache the Scythian dies not with a bang, and not with a whimper, but with a gentle exhale surrounded by those that have loved her through the test of time.

Nile reminds herself of this as she watches them float hesitantly on the wind of change, observes Quynh tremble as she sifts through the paintings, runs her fingers reverently over a headdress. She watches Joe staring blindly at manuscripts, legends and tales of old, anecdotes of Andy’s scribbled in a furious scrawl as she corrected her own history. She sees Nicky braced around his husband, wan and washed out as he rubs delicate patterns over his shoulders, gently turns the pages when Joe can’t gain control of his disobedient hands while they shake.

Nile’s not even reached her first century and she’s inherited four weapons of war, and she doesn’t want the responsibility but that’s not what fate has in store for her it seems. Nile stands with a new title, one she accepts and resents in equal measure, tries to hand over to each of them in the coming weeks, and is rebuffed at every turn.

Andy cored out a place in her heart and it’s left so achingly bare without her.

But time heals all things.

Broken hearts are no different.

Though they aren’t left in the same state as they once were, may never be again, and the heart of Nile Freeman, be it immortal and powerful like a hummingbird throbbing beneath her rib-cage, is no different. Part of her is with Andy, part of her is with her mother, her brother, the niece she never met, and part of her is split in tiny golden baubles, spread between those around her now.

She’s stood in front of a vividly haunting depiction of destruction in canvas form when she realises that Booker is stood at her flank, a half step behind while she’s drifted around the cave, as if he’s been shackled to her.

“Adam Elsheimer.” He says quietly.

“The burning of Troy. I know.”

They’re quiet for a while, companionable even, and Nile considers him for the first time since she broke his banishment to give a stubborn woman one of her last wishes.

“Thank you.”

“I’d say that I didn’t do it for you…”

“But you’re too kind to do that.”

Nile wonders why that is, why she felt such knee-buckling relief to see him step out of the car with colour in his cheeks, hair longer than she remembers brushing across his cheekbones as he walked without the subtle influence of liquor. He’d hesitated in front of her and Nile can’t deny that she’d almost toppled them both with the force of her hug.

It’s tempting to ask him to stay now he’s here, and when she looks at him she can feel the words forming under the curl of her tongue, brushing against her teeth as she clenches her jaw. 

Eventually he says it for her. “I’m heading out tonight.”

“Okay.” She’s grateful for it, is certain that she’d cave otherwise.

“I’ll see you in twenty-eight years.” Booker jokes, though it falls flat straight from his lips.

“Will I?”

“If you’ll have me.”

He dithers, and she can trace along his disappointment, his loneliness as it swells all-encompassing and finds perch in her throat as she swallows.

She _wants_ him to stay.

Not for the team, but for herself.

Which is why she has to be cruel, make the cut now and hope that the fresh roots grow through.

“I need to know that you’ll have my back, Sebastien, when the time comes.” She rounds on him, steps close enough she can feel his breath fan across her cheeks, and he doesn’t back down, the hunched shame she sees with clarity since her first interactions with him present even now. “That you won’t hesitate to take the knife-“

“I would take any blow for you.” He insists, eyes glowing in the dim light.

She believes him that.

“I need you without the bottle attached to your hip.”

“Done.”

Seventy years ago, Nile would have smiled at his earnestness. Now she hasn’t got the energy, weary of raising her hopes and having them dashed.

“I need you _present_ Booker. I need to know that you’re with us not because of the loneliness, but that you recognise that we’re your family. I can’t have you on this team and then worrying that at any moment you’re gonna relapse, get caught in a spiral and someone else gets hurt because of it.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes, Nile.”

She believes him this too.

“Okay then.”

Without much thought she pats his cheek, too absorbed in the monumental undertaking ahead of her to realise that he presses into her touch, the scruff rubbing against the sensitive pads of her fingertips (though she’ll think about it later in the silence of an empty room, for a _long_ time).

“Come and find me in twenty-eight years and if you mean it then I’d be honoured to have you at my side.”

\---

He comes to her in the night, while she’s leaning against the railing outside of a small pub, two fingers of whiskey swilling about in her glass.

This is before London becomes lost in the throes of fear and prejudice, when there’s still a chance that they can walk down cobbled streets and follow the long stretch of the Thames as it coils through the city like a pulsing vein of life.

The others are so certain that he’s coming, Joe is in there now getting the last of his empty threats out while Quynh gracefully indulges him with advice, little embellishments if Joe is truly determined to string Booker’s intestines up as festive lights come December.

Now Nile is certain that he’s coming too… mostly.

But then there’s a small piece of her that dwells and examines his face in a cave in Val d’Argent and she wonders if he’s ready to commit to them. To their cadre. Their family.

She won’t suffer half-hearted loyalties.

She’s daydreaming a little when he steps in front of her. Imagines she’s in the river but only waist deep, the cold slowly infusing her skin and her feet sink with every step as she sways between submerging and escaping, mud making her movements slow and unwieldy. She sees a man on the distant banks, he’s watching her with apprehension, with uncertainty borne of a crippling inadequacy that hasn’t been entirely assuaged given time.

Finally, she tips her head back and stares at those murky eyes.

She notices the clean cut of his profile, the crisp scent of wood ash, salt and smoke, the hot hollow of his throat when he swallows reflexively under her assessing eyes. Lashes lowering when he stares at the decking and Nile realises in that moment, that she’s been invested a degree of power outside the realms of her new role, that Sebastien is pledging his immortal life into her hands and she can either take and carefully cultivate it, or she can crush him.

It’s not much of an option, is it.

“Are you ready?”

He exhales roughly, depressing and uncoiling as if her words are the balm for a wound that's festered too long, and she’s suddenly aware that she’s a part of his undoing when he nods, tongue-tied.

“Come here.”

She doesn’t have to ask again, feels his large body fold itself into her arms and she thinks about the significance of things when neither of them are willing to let go until Joe’s surprised holler reaches them and crashes into the quiet moment with all the finesse of geriatric on roller skates.

\---

For a man that she once thought had the emotional range of a brooding raccoon, Nile finds that she and Booker work better than she could have ever imagined.

She waits apprehensively for the first few decades for the work to drown him, the waves to take him under and she watches the shore for his bones to wash up. For him to shatter with barely a whisper, and it’s an injustice she supposes to the man he is, and still she can’t help watching him with a hawk’s gaze.

Until one day… she doesn’t.

Booker is here, a part of their lives, and the team has never been stronger, like slaking a thirst that hasn’t hindered them but niggles at the back of one’s mind until drawing that first sip of cool water.

Nile looks at them all and thinks, _yes, this is it, we’re complete._

(Bar one, but they don’t talk of that).

Joe is the heart of their family, the vena cava, the song in their lifeblood, a fever of a man that smiles so brightly the sun should cower in his presence.

Nicky is the sniper at her back, the long ranged archer, the vengeful warrior hidden beneath sponge cakes and his husband’s sonnets.

Quynh is barely tempered rage, an ember in a coal fire, searing as a brand on naked flesh, yet clinging to hope like it’s finely spun gossamer.

Booker is the shield to her sword, follows her always a half-step behind into battle, the brains that eases them through this ever changing world despite his affectations to asinine self-degradation.

Nile looks at them all and thinks that she’s lucky.

She still thinks that now, as the truck disappears down the road and she’s left staring numbly into the distance wondering how they’ve come to this. Smuggling the accumulation of Andy’s life away from the same warring humans she’d spent six-thousand-years defending.

“The liberation are an hour out.” Booker warns as he checks the small handheld. "Quynh says she can herd some of them off but she needs our distraction."

Nile can’t say that she’s ever understood how he’s kept up with it all, the technology rising and rising, then dropping and dropping dependant on the country, the mood, the civility that borders on tribalism at best. Don’t get her wrong, it’s invaluable at this point, that someone in their cadre has taken the responsibility, if only that it’s one less thing for her to carry.

“You ready?” Booker straddles his bike and waits patiently.

Nile, who hasn’t got the energy to do this, to walk away from another place, another memory, doesn’t want to join him. It might be nice to stay here awhile, to make this a final place of grandstanding, to plant her feet in the dirt and demand that for once the world breaks around her.

Instead Nile starts shaking the jerrycan until there’s fuel splattered everywhere, backtracks a safe enough distance before withdrawing the Molotov from her bag, lights it, pulls her arm back and throws it without giving herself time to hesitate.

She secures the door behind her as the heat chases after her like the hounds of hell, turns her back on another sliver of her past and storms towards whatever future can be found on the back of an ancient Ducati and a man that confounds her.

“Nicky radioed in, they think that they’re being followed already.”

“Fantastic.” She groans as she draws level with him. “Your people are getting worse than the English for being paranoid whacko’s you know that?”

“Indeed, it’s almost like they’re in the middle of a war, no?” Booker muses with a wry smile. “You driving or detonating?” He holds the pack up between them and Nile doesn’t hesitate in reaching past and grabbing the keys, sliding in front of him.

“You’re better with explosives.” She admits.

“Is that a compliment?”

“Whoa, lets not get ahead of ourselves here.” She keeps her nose up and studiously ignores the warm chuckle as he settles his hands on her waist, thighs bracketing hers as she pulls them away.

In the end, she ponders, as they limp into the Delta safe-house in Andorra, clothes still smoking and Booker still regenerating half of his right arm, about endings, how one judges an ending when it’s cyclical. They never end, and they never die, and the world is ceaseless in its capacity for destruction, and she wants to be tired of it all, and yet she’s not.

Not while she still has her family, has Joe charging forward, fixing his arms around her thighs and lifting her up with a spin.

Not with Nicky and his hands clasping her neck, tilting her face up to kiss her temple and encasing her with such love it settles deep in her bones.

Not while Quynh is sat in the corner of the room, headdress in her lap, quietly thanking them with diamonds leaking from her eyes.

Not while she can now claim that she’s raced across the Silver valley, an aspiring pyromaniac as they turn the French army around chasing its own tail while Booker’s laugh sets her nerves alight with a glorious purpose.

She has her family, and they’re patchy and a little broken, and they’re entirely hers.

And besides, how can she be maudlin when there’s a fucking Rodin in the kitchen and an annotated Iliad with Andy’s indignant corrections in bright red sharpie on the coffee table.

\---

Apparently, despite all of this, she can still be maudlin.

Booker seems to have this talent for being there when Nile descends into that dangerous space between reminiscing and regretting.

This time it’s a blink and you’ll miss it moment as they skirt past Chicago, one of the few testaments to the America she grew up in that still has mortar strong enough it’s not completely caved in yet.

They’re driving down an old highway, her feet are planted up on the dashboard and Booker’s humming to a song on the radio, taken with the tune enough that he’s tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. Their latest job required a frustratingly long stake-out and Nicky has taken Joe ahead with him as they’d moved onto their next target, and there’s always _another_ and the worlds so dark sometimes that she finds the urge to curl up into a ball a temptation that’s hard to resist.

But she does resist, because when she fades others suffer, and withdrawing is another form of cowardice when she can take the punishment met out and rise seconds after.

It’s somewhere along this stretch of road, to the soundtrack of Booker’s husky rumble that she thinks about _home_ and _family_. Those that are her blood and marrow, DNA shared and coded into the long line of her brother’s children, and the last that she checked she’s still an aunt, albeit a great, great, great, great, great, great, great…

She’s actually lost count.

But there’s relations there, and she’s considers asking Booker to turn them around, is certain that he’d do it.

He’s incapable of saying no to her.

There’s been a rising pressure over the last few decades. She’s found that she’s been carrying Andy’s death around like another brick on her chest to join the rest, crumbling and releasing little chips that shred through her veins, and she’s three-hundred years old and _tired_.

Even now as she’s learnt that it’s not an ending, for they are beyond endings. No matter which way Nile turns, tries to move forward, she’s found that creatures like them are meant for circles - endless, _balanced_ and _beautiful_ in their own madness.

She’s died a thousand times, and she’ll die a thousand more if she’s lucky, and so it’s nothing to cloak herself in it, because time heals all things, even broken hearts and her memories and stories are not the same from each retelling, but they’re hers.

And she wonders for a brief moment if this is how Booker felt, at some point, even for a second before he made _that_ decision. A displaced sensation as she tried to adjust to what was around her, the sheer scope of an eternity when she’s but a small fragment of it. She could compare herself to Andy but there’s no foundation for that sort of a comparison, they’re alone and that’s about it. There was a dizzying breadth to Andy’s life, the things she’d seen, to skim the very surface, Nile thinks, would be to put many scholars to shame.

She’s ruminating on this, picking apart the threads and inspecting them when she’s pulled up abruptly.

“Did you,” she glances at him disbelievingly, “just flick my nose?”

Booker maintains a straight face, though she can see the corners of his mouth curl ever so slightly. “And if I did?”

“Prick.” She elbows him lightly, careful because she doesn’t want to have to hitch a ride if they crash. “Absolute fuckin’ prick.”

“Most definitely.” He says and, because he’s been honest with her since the day they sat opposite each other in a cave so many lifetimes ago, he gently prods at her mood with a cautious hand. “What’re you thinking of?”

“The world.” She presses her tongue to the back of her teeth and tries to disseminate, to unearth the core of her problems. “Do you think people are doomed to thirst for war, or is there a chance they can ever rise above it?”

Booker whistles. “That’s one hell of a question, Nile.”

“If they are, then what’s our purpose anymore?”

She waits him out, knows he’ll eventually answer her.

“I think we have the gift of hindsight, and with that comes the curse of knowing how easily things could change for the better. But we’re also still insignificant in the scale of things so all we can do is try to influence it as much as is our share.”

“You’re awful at giving reassurance.” Nile chides without heat. “People are so finite and yet they cause such chaos.”

“All that’s infinite in this world, is the universe and man’s greed.”

“And us.”

“And us.” He agrees and reaches over to pat her shoulder.

Absently she reaches up and catches his hand, feels for the pulse at his wrist and takes reassurance when it greets her, wildly racing along as she strokes over the top of it before her fingers naturally slide between his.

She waits for him to pull away.

But to her surprise, or perhaps, truthfully, her pleasure, he doesn’t move.

Fumbles awkwardly to turn, change gears, and occasionally his grip tightens, but he holds her hand and Nile leans back in her seat as they pull further away from her childhood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope no one minds but I've added an extra chapter to this because I've ended up writing so much down and I didn't want the last chapter to spiral out of control. It's just turned out to be surprisingly fun to allow Nile to be the one with doubts and having her faith tested while having Booker be the relatively composed for once.


	3. Chapter 3

Nile decides, with much consideration around the starburst of pain and blood gushing out of her chest, that she might need to take a break.

Being harpooned is not something that she saw in the cards truthfully. Though really she, of all people, should probably be more open to the idea of being surprised by the sheer tenacity of cornered militants that felt as if they had nothing to lose.

Hitting the water, she’d like to say that she’d had more profound things running through her mind other than _oh, you fuckers_ , and an assortment of cursing in four different languages. But after so many weary times down this road there’s only so many hallmark moments she can dredge up before it all fades to grey, especially when her thoughts haven’t fully disintegrated when she’s tugged out of the waters depths.

Fortunately, whoever it is that grabs her is kind enough to wait for her to die before they pull the shaft out of her chest, and when Nile comes to it’s with a guttural sound as her rib-cage reforms around her fluttering heart. Her team have already fanned out to deal with the threat and there’s a cacophony of bullets and bloodshed that lets her know that Quynh has taken a particular offence to Nile’s unplanned departure.

Understandable really, there’s little that seems to infuriate Quynh quite so much as watching one of their own disappearing beneath the waves.

Booker, as usual, is waiting for her.

Unlike usual, his face in uncharacteristically distant, his hand thudding rhythmically into her back as she lurches upright and leans over to cough up the fluid swimming in her lungs.

“Quite rude that,” she gasps and slowly leans back into the bracing support he gives so freely, “you’d think all of the water would have at least leaked out of the hole in my body.”

A terrible joke, and the silence that follows (around all of said gunfire and distant screaming) has her taking him in properly. Booker’s _drenched_ , shirt sticking to the question mark his spine has created curled around her, shoulders hunched, hair matted and there’s this painfully exposed live-wire flashing behind his eyes. Nile realises that the distance she mistook while her organs reassembled is very much still there, but it’s more a long road paved in the horror of her sinking into oblivion without him.

And the reason she knows this? Can recognise it so intimately? Spends a few precious seconds running her fingers over the scruff of his jaw and threading them into the tangles of his hair, tips their heads and lets mingle their breaths together until the sound of a grenade setting off pulls them apart?

Well…

Nile uses the tremendous blood loss (her ability to replicate it instantly aside) and ignores the answers in favour of re-joining her team as the action reaches a high and helps them bring the nose of the plane down safely so to speak.

Which means that she and Booker bring Quynh back from the red-tinged edge, locate Nicky and Joe where they’re finishing up with the last few people that tried to flee, and then they set the place on fire. Which, isn’t a method that Nile had ever thought they’d be using quite so often, but surprisingly she’s learnt over the centuries that a healthy blaze is sometimes the only way to go when concluding the destruction of yet _another_ trafficking ring.

Once more, Nile would like to put it out there to the universe, that she really hates England sometimes.

She and Quynh talk about it that night, drinks flowing liberally as Nile tries to resist reaching back to rub the smooth skin covering the recently shattered bits of her spine.

“It’s certainly a unique way to go.” Quynh smiles understandably, toes dangling over the end of the pool, skimming the water just so, brows knitting together temporarily until the tiny tremors in her feet settle.

Nile, having never been upon the receiving end of a repetitively inflicted trauma, cannot say she understands even now how the warrior can tolerate such deliberate exposure to a trigger. Certainly, she doesn’t relish the idea of ending up impaled again, but Quynh has a certain charm to her deliberate attempts to rasp away the sharp point of her fear.

As if she’s daring Nile or anyone else to call her out for it.

“I can’t say that I’m in the mood to repeat it anytime soon.” She winces in memory, gives in and traces the invisible lines delineating this death from the last.

Quynh watches her quietly. Extends the gallon jug of raspberry plonk that they found in the cellar of the temporary shelter they’re staying in. The countryside around them is too hot to move for at least a day or so and Nile isn’t in the mood to leave a trail of bloody footprints behind them where it can be avoided.

Especially with the knowledge that she eventually has to scramble over that fucking wall again to find their boat.

Nile tops up her glass and tries not to think about how long it’s been since she was in this country, about all of the changes around them, and how it was only, maybe, a hundred miles from here that she made an irrevocable choice and hasn’t stopped to look back aside from a few fleeting moments here and there.

“I’m tired.” She admits.

Quynh, who understands her more than Nile could ever expect to deserve, flicks her toes once more before drawing her knees up to her chest. “I do not think you’re the only one.”

“I don’t think so either.”

Nile sighs and knows that Joe and Nicky are in a room upstairs, the former declaring his affirmations of love with beautiful, dizzying words and the latter doing so with a quiet, but no less adoring, love. Preparing to go through whatever the next mission can throw at them with a steely resolve she wishes she could emulate.

She also knows that Booker’s waiting inside, has probably already hollowed himself out to try and make room for the sheer scope of his despair over her death. Though if Nile thought for a second that he was resorting to his old trick of spiralling into a twister of guilt and self-hatred then she’d be in there in a heartbeat. But that she _knows_ him is why she’s respecting the tiny sliver of space he requires after these slip ups, to wrangle his thoughts and feelings and emotions into something appropriate.

Because that’s what they do, she and her Sebastien.

They leash their feelings in tight until the only salient expression of affection is a mutual admiration and respect that never veers past the well-defined lines of professionalism.

Except…

It doesn’t always work like that, so Nile consoles herself when they finally leave this bloody island two days later than planned, eyes scanning the sea around them for border patrols and the rare but opportunistic pirates that seem to think now is the time to resurrect the old ways.

Nicky is carefully scanning the skies, scope slowly swivelling while Joe covers him with a mixture of his binoculars and the radar that Booker rigged them up a few years ago that’s more than proved it’s worth since. Nile is trusting them to cover her six as she captains their small vessel with a confidence that wanes a little each time they hit a patch of choppy surf.

That and Quynh’s bitten-off noises. It’s the closest any of them will hear of her discomfort and Nile doesn’t have to look down to know that she’s crouched not a foot away, eyes staring distantly at the water. Just like she knows that Booker’s at her side, most likely has a hand latched around her bicep like Quynh prefers from him, a steady anchor, and Nile gets it because she’s been held in those powerful arms. She knows what it’s like to depend on him.

To find the appeal of slotting her smaller body against his bordering on imposing larger frame. Booker takes up space, unintentionally maybe, but there’s no denying that the bulk of him leaves no room for doubt when pushing into his orbit, especially when he has this dreadful habit of shying away even now and Nile feels the tiniest bit of jealousy prick her conscious thoughts that Quynh has this ability to take the comfort she needs from him without hesitation.

The wind’s picking up while she chews this over, glances back at them more than she might usually, stares a little too obviously at the way his hair ruffles, and she doesn’t really think before she lets her hand drop down. Naturally of course. If that means that it falls in the perfect position with only a _small_ bit of manipulation, to rest at the nape of his neck? Then so be it.

And if Quynh’s foot slides out to hook around Nile’s ankle, and they both smile at one another, and Booker leans back into her touch, and his free hand comes up to loosely circle her wrist with a questioning quirk of his brow? She hasn’t really got the answer for him, but she does know one thing.

Nile is starting to grow rather fucking weary of being obtuse.

\---

They eventually do decide to take a year, unless something of cataclysmic proportions occurs.

Even then Nile thinks that she might just hit the snooze alarm if the apocalypse comes and go back to sleep.

But seriously, she thinks it will do them all some good to live among ordinary humans for a while, be local and contained in a manner to see the confines the mortals enjoy. Try and remember a time when calling people _mortals_ would have had her cussing and calling that sort of bullshit out.

She needs a break before she cracks apart and is finished for good. Before she looks at the growing wound the worlds creating in her, like blood poisoning beginning at the tip of her fingers and travelling upwards, and decides to lop her entire arm off to spare a greater pain.

So they gather for one last family dinner, collectively peer around the kitchen door to marvel at the meal Nicky crafts with dexterous fingers and Nile thinks that she’ll miss this aspect of their unceasing closeness. The simple pleasure of listening to Booker hum tunelessly to himself as he lays the table, to hear Quynh’s wicked retelling’s of a far less suave Yusef while the man himself vehemently denies it, Nicky nodding along sagely when asked for clarification.

They have such a lightness to the proceedings that it still feels comfortable even when Joe jokes about their last official year-long break, where Andy had been in the precise situation they all find themselves in now. Dejected at the state of the world and unmotivated to try and change it.

_“At least this time we won’t get together and have somebody betray us.”_

It’s a joke.

Booker laughs.

Quynh throws a butter knife.

Nicky catches it with an impressive twirl.

Everything is perfect.

Still, Nile is almost relieved as the house empties out the next morning. She obligingly allows Joe to grasp her in a hug so tight that it steals her breath and she clings back until he finishes swinging her off of her feet with a burst of laughter. Nicky is more reserved in that he only folds her into his arms with a soft smile and a promise that she knows where to find them.

“Anytime, Nile.”

“If you think that I’m showing up unannounced when it comes to you two, then you must think that I’m mad.” She jokes and waves after their retreating backs.

“Should I be making the same offer?” Quynh muses as she shoulders her go bag, lips pursed in amusement then immediate disdain as Nile barrels towards her. “Oh, no, please don’t. Your emotions give me terrible cramps.”

Nile ignores her and hooks her in for a single second before the older woman wriggles free far less gracefully than she might if she truly wished to escape. Nile watches silently then as Quynh and Booker stand with bent heads saying their goodbyes, an understanding running between them that speaks of a time where they’d achieved a strange kismet. Boy wants to die; girl wants to destroy. They’d been perfect for one another, bought together in a way that even Nile can see makes sense.

Once Quynh leaves, as the sun chases her shadow long after she crests the hill leading out of the small town they’ve taken respite in, Nile shuts the safe-house door and her smile drops. She relishes the ability to just exist without a pretence, without fear of exposing herself as anything less than wholly in control.

Except that she’s not alone.

And it doesn’t matter because if there’s anyone left alive today that might begin to understand her exhaustion it’s the man making himself busy clearing up the mess they’d left last night in favour of crashing down in the small courtyard out back and wringing a few more hours together.

It might be the time to say something profound, something rich and fascinating enough to tempt his fancy into joining her, but there’s a lingering indecision, a cowardice if you will, that haunts her every step with him recently, so Nile waits until he eventually comes to her in the lounge.

“Where are you going to spend your year Booker?” She asks absently as she crosses out boundary lines on her out of date atlas. Scowling when she realises just how much the world has dared to change around her when confronted with the irrefutable proof in her hands.

There was a time where he might have baulked and skirted her question with a deflection and whiskey. Now he looks her head on and says, “Where would you have me go?”

 _Thank you_.

She almost says. Instead pats the space beside her and most definitely doesn’t smile when he folds down to sit.

Nile has given a great deal of thought to the possibilities as a solitary traveller, of where she might want to put down roots even for this short while, and comes to the realisation that although he was never going to encroach without an explicit invitation, she’d already long designed her plans to include the two of them. As a pair. Without so much as a conscious thought.

It’s rather sickening, and Nile would quite like it if she could convince herself of that when she swings her feet off of the coffee table and into Booker’s lap, shimmying over so she’s leaning against his shoulder obviously enough that even he can’t ignore the hint and lifts his arm for her.

“Right, help me work out where the hell Bulgaria ends, and Romania begins these days and then we’ll come up with a plan.”

The blueprint of his smile in all its brilliance is merged in Nile’s amygdala.

\---

The world, it turns out, is still good even if it must be observed as the sum of its parts rather than an objective whole. Different portions of it bring back memories of Nile’s youth that she must have forgotten without the sensory reminders, without dabbing smears of it across her fingers to sample without smoke and blood blinding her. It doesn’t feel like it’s been _that_ long since she went to a place without intent and purpose, and yet it must have been a lifetime.

Nile has committed the cardinal sin of forgetting how when you take the time to just _look_ the world is a microcosm, is made of countless thriving communities, filled to the brim with diverse personalities, individuals of every creed and orientation.

They dive into cities that are still clinging onto their origins, that she can remember touring during a summer with Andy when everything was a technicolor marvel still, and now, with Booker, she finds a quieter but no less moderate version of this.

She reads on white sand beaches on large fluffy towels with a parasol shielding her from the fierce glow of the sun and Booker dozing lightly next to her, and neither of them do anything more adventurous than a particularly expressive bout of cursing when she decides to wake him by flicking water over his tan legs.

They take the time to marvel at the Wiñay Wayna, to clamber excitedly to see the Sayacmarca, and then in the next breath traversing the streets of Kraków. Quickly becoming adept at locating the tiny pockets of history still tucked away between the advancements of the future.

At one point Nile goes for the truly mundane and takes up knitting whilst they stay in Würzburg. Does she know why this precious time is the best to waste on something so inane? No. But she does it anyway because she can recall a faint, half scattered memory of watching her mom do it as a child and learning, though admittedly distracted, knelt at her feet. She wants to see if the skill has kept over time and so she practices, and practices, and _fucking practices_ …

For a week.

But still, she should probably end up with something more than the gnarled mess that might possibly constitute a lopsided sweater one day.

“Alas,” Booker tries his hardest not to laugh one morning, she can _see_ his lips twitch, “it seems that time doesn’t always lead to mastery.”

“Fuck off.” Nile goes back to her hideous knitting with a vengeance.

“What is that meant to be?” He leans over her shoulder to witness her disaster.

“Watch it.” Nile warns him and concentrates on slowly making her way back to where she’s somehow dropped a fucking stitch. “It's meant to be a sweater. Possibly.”

“I see.” Booker makes an appreciative sound.

“I wanted to do something delicate.” She admits a day later and he watches her so fondly she can’t quite meet his eye. “Though god knows what the hell I’m going to do with this.”

“I would be honoured to wear it.” He says with a straight face.

She decides to test him, and sure enough, Booker puts on her monstrosity with a defiant grin when she finally finishes.

Nile feels a frisson of something tender and dangerous and unprecedented in its magnitude when a week later she finds the wool tucked into his go bag amongst the precious few things he keeps there.

After that it’s a constant push and pull of the tide, never lingering too long when there’s always something else waiting out of sight for her to rediscover. She tries strange new foods, marvels at the passion bestowed upon a single dish and the fervour of the chefs. She wants to eat, to drink, to _feast_ on life before she allows it to become ash on her tongue.

Booker seems to also find this his greatest honour, to be _allowed,_ to accompany her on this journey.

They consume Makguksu in Seoul, twirling the buckwheat noodles and humming approval at the sesame seed oil on their tongues, and then Booker insists that she try Wellfleet oysters from their home in Cape cod (though she loathes them with a passion, it’s worth it just to hear the bubble of laughter he tries to suppress at her disgust). They eat lefse in Norway accompanied by steaming mugs of coffee and debate the likelihood of imminent death and decapitation if they go where Booker next suggests.

She’s becoming dreadfully soft on him, Nile notes, as they hike back across the border into France, only a few months after they _really_ pissed off the winning side of the war, just so he can present to her a _real_ beignet.

Which she then proceeds to piss him off like his distant brethren.

“So it’s like a doughnut, right?”

He turns apoplectic, and Nile wonders if they’d have their first real argument if she hadn’t taken a bite and groaned at the sugary-sweetness, licks the remnants from her fingers and catches him staring at her, wide eyed, cheeks crimson.

“I’ve had a beignet before, Booker.”

He’s still staring at her, flushed and Nile knows he’s gone when she tests it with a, “I think they were better in New Orleans though,” and Booker doesn’t burst a vein in outrage.

Though, of course, they have to go to Louisiana just so he can stand defiantly, arms crossed over that large chest to await her verdict.

“Well?”

“Hmm.” Nile tries the trick again, flicking her tongue out over her thumb, and savouring his transfixed gaze. “I don’t know, Paris just doesn’t seem to cut it anymore.”

“You have no taste.” He informs her and stalks away muttering obscenities.

“Wait, wait, _wait,_ ” Nile laughs and chases after him, feels like she’s full to the brim with something bright and delicate.

Booker sniffs and for a second resists her attempts to hook her arm through his before eventually capitulating. “Why would I stick around for someone with such an appalling palate?”

And she really tests him, because that's all she seems to do these days, and gestures to herself before saying, “Because you have no taste either?”

His spluttered outrage has Nile laughing until her face _aches,_ until he takes his pleasure in her joy and everything’s just fucking perfect.

\---

Booker, for all of his horrified objections at her dismissal of his motherland, stays at her side.

He stays.

And it’s all perfect.

But…

The life of a mouse is not one that either of them can ever find a satisfaction in. Not truly, and not in any meaningful way. And Nile knows what she’s been doing, and how this simple role they’ve been playing has been vital, but it’s only a pit stop, a temporary delay to an inevitable future, and it doesn’t scare her. A diversion is sometimes necessary, she knows what they do is vital, that a single death can be exchanged for a dozen lives and from there the branching paths will map out a whole constellation of change.

James Copley gave her that gift before she could even begin to fathom how much she needed it.

There’s a month until they return, until she has to rally and no longer has time to indulge in these particular brands of weakness. Nile understands this, thinks about it after they finish a trek to reach the Moldoveanu peak, a rare first, and now that they’re further down the Carpathian mountains she can’t help but feel a little remorseful that it’s over.

That this will be the last wild, free moment where she can bemoan the humidity as it sticks her shirt to her skin and likewise admire the similar effect whenever Booker leads. To work in tandem silence when they set up camp, accompanied only by the occasional sound of the wildlife shifting perpetually in the background.

Maybe it’s archaic to those not born before the turn of the Millennia, but technology has become a blunt obstruction to her life at times Nile decides, when she realises that this foray into the wilderness is the longest she’s been without an artificial distraction.

She shares this with Booker around a handful of trail mix, of which Nile has discovered a kinship with Nicky’s stout defence of. The two of them have settled for the night a little earlier than usual, perhaps in silent agreement that neither of them are in any rush to make it to Brasov.

“I’ll remember that the next time you need me to hack something for you.” Booker drops to the ground next to her.

“You know what I mean.” Nile rolls her eyes anyway. “Quynh would get it.”

“She would, you can tell her that soon.”

Nile almost wishes she couldn’t, would quite like to stay here, with the small pricks of jagged stones digging into her legs, her skin tickled with the unnecessary heat of the fire crackling behind her and Booker’s burning presence as he stares at her unabashedly in a way that only he’s earned the right to.

As soon as she thinks of it, as soon as she recognises it, Nile feels a release that’s unnerving, disconcerting. The licence to want and wish for something with all of her heart for entirely selfish means is not something that she’s allowed since they scattered Andy’s ashes across the four corners of the world. She wonders what he’d do now if she clutched his face in hands that have been taught a thousand ways to kill, have implemented those methods, have forgotten what it’s like to gentle something precious.

And when she’s still reeling from the acknowledgement that he’s _precious_ , terribly so, to her, Booker shifts restlessly and says:

“I’m grateful that we’ve had this time together.”

The sincerity in his words has something igniting across Nile’s bones, has her spine unfurling, and she thinks that there’s no escaping this in the end, because she’s got no other choice, and she doesn’t want one either.

Booker watches her hand as it comes up to graze his cheek with a measured amount of caution, as if a single moment of her touch is too much for him to handle now, as if it will cause him to disintegrate.

It’s not unwarranted hesitation, not when she’s touched so freely and easily before without the intention of ceding this last scrap of space between them, and Nile is… is so _tired_ of resisting. She _wants_ this. Rises up and moves with a grace borne from years of training and utilised now to let herself settle into Booker’s lap, knees either side of his hips, eyes gazing up at her wide and open.

“You’re the only one I would have wanted to come with me.”

He swallows and Nile runs her thumb down the column of his throat, nail scraping lightly over the hollows and tracing back up. She can feel his heart racing, the vibrations echoing against her in this proximity and Nile remembers that feeling, in a little pub in London centuries past, of a vested power cupped in her palms as Booker’s body waits dormant in her hands for a command, an order, a whisper.

“A long time ago,” she confesses quietly and he’s so eager for her words that he’s made himself malleable to her voice, “the thought of eternity made me uneasy. To be responsible for all of you when Andy died… I was lost at the thought of keeping my head above it all without thinking of anyone else. Then you showed up in London and, _God_ Book, you had this limitless faith in me, and it was so overwhelming.”

“And now?”

She can _feel_ the words escape him in a hoarse whisper, _feels_ an insane urge to demand that he talks to her in that voice until dawn breaks.

“Now?” Nile hums low and contemplative, thinks that he would probably wait for a thousand dawns to hear her say his name, and she’s been a little in denial perhaps, but Nile Freeman, the original and best version of herself, is brave enough to give him this. “Now I think that I’ve become so _fucking_ greedy when it comes to you Sebastien.”

She shifts to grasp his face in her keeping hands and holds his trembling form with a possessive, protective, proud heat that spreads from his skin into hers until there’s an almost feral burn licking down her spine.

“Now I think that you’re mine, wouldn’t you agree?”

Booker nods frantically.

“And I’m yours.”

It’s important that he understands this, that he accepts her declaration as an equal and not out of anything resembling duty. That Booker _wants_ her as Nile and not one of the many incarnations they’ve lived through, all the watered down copies.

If his blown out pupils wreathed in blue fire are anything to go by, then he understands just fine.

His hands come up to her hips, fit there perfectly, a captured comfort in his firm grip and if maybe they were too new and desperate then he’d express his gratitude through words, and maybe it would have sated a simple fleeting desire.

But this isn’t simple, and Nile wants in a way that’s too fierce for her body, a brutal sweetness that slams into her chest and leaves her tipping forward, at odds with the velvet-soft need sweeping through her heart without mercy. The only solution, she decides, is to snatch the hitching _Nile_ as it escapes Booker in a rush with her lips and kiss him with a pent up frustration years in the making.

Booker surges up against her and Nile steadies them both with a hand in his hair, a quick, grasping moment that has her sinking down into him with a relieved sigh as he obediently lifts his head with the barest of pressure. Her other hand is _everywhere_ , nails scoring down between his shoulders, sliding underneath the tail of his shirt once she’s untucked it, and then greedily pressing against every bare inch of skin she can find.

Which seems to be fine with Booker when she’s rewarded a low groan, and in her distraction to palm the firm muscles of his back he takes the time to slowly make his way down her jaw with little nips and wet kisses.

Sometime between encouraging the sting of his teeth along her throat, behind her ear, across the expanse of her collarbone he plants her name in a barely audible susurration into her skin with a worshipful reverence, and it contrasts so perfectly with the soothing swipes of his tongue that her pulse is hammering under his ministrations.

Her touch turns fast and desperate, erratic. Carding her fingers through his hair, running her thumb along his shoulder blades, and Nile’s too _old_ to feel like she might vibrate out of her skin from so little. It’s entirely involuntary and she can’t bring herself to care when she shivers at the sensation of his scruff dragging across sensitive flesh before it heals.

When she finally pulls back enough to bring his head back it’s almost too much to see the way he looks at her as if his only purpose in life is to wring out every noise and reaction he can before she’s done with him.

 _Foolish idiot_.

But what she says instead is a breathless, “Yeah?” and glances, unsubtle, towards her tent.

Booker swallows, runs his fingertips torturously slow over the crest of her hip, and then, _finally_ , with a voice pitched low and rough, says, “Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm kind of thinking that I'm gonna have to bump this rating up for the next chapter if nobody minds :D


	4. Chapter 4

One night, maybe a decade ago, a year or two after Russia, Nile comes out of her room to make herself a cup of tea, and instead ends up stumbling upon the _softest_ scene she’s ever witnessed.

Nicky’s been too high strung recently, they’ve just come out of a _foul_ job, and although she’s given it her all, they’ve each come out of it with a handful of deaths and a smattering of fresh wounds on their souls.

Her palms can still recall the tacky feel of Quynh's bloodied hair as she'd steadied the unconscious woman's head in her lap as Joe had swerved the getaway vehicle around sharp corners until at one point Nile was certain they were on two wheels while Nicky hung precariously out of the passenger window covering their escape. Booker crouched next to her, clasping Quynh's shuddering stomach still while the torn skin knitted together and her body purged the poison surging through her bloodstream.

Since then Nicky’s taken to stalking each safe house they stop in, takes long loops along the perimeter until he’s satisfied by some unknown standard. There’s growing bags under his eyes that have inexplicably turned a dark purple, a feat that Nile thinks deserves some sort of reward, might even have had her worried he unwittingly stumbled into his mortality if she hadn’t seen him nick his hand a few hours before and it’d barely beaded over before sealing once more.

His other trick has been to take a vigil each night, surveying the landscape outside with those selenite eyes narrowing at invisible foes that Nicky seems to dare exist on his plane of reality. Nile has tried to speak with him, to console, to offer a watch schedule, but each time Nicky calmly counters her points with a polite decline attached and in the end, who is she to pick apart another’s coping mechanism.

Nile, who has no interest in startling a man that she’s seen obliterate more than one crime syndicate with his rifle, a cricket bat, and his incredibly disturbing war smile, is intending to make her presence known before she enters the living room. Slowly peers around the open door preparing to call out and instead feels the air whoosh out of her lungs.

Joe’s sat bolt upright in a manner that must have his spine screaming in protest, but he’s resolute, Nile thinks, because Nicky’s slumped against his chest, gun in his lax hand, and Joe’s absently combing his fingers through Nicky’s hair, kissing his temple. The exhaustion bleeds into Joe’s voice as he recites something ancient and reverent, Nicky subconsciously shifting back into him, restless when Joe eases the gun free from his clutch and places it on the floor, settling only as Joe lifts his hand and kisses each of his knuckles.

While Nile is frozen in the face of a love unparalleled in it’s beauty, a shadow passes in her peripherals, comes to stand at her shoulder and joins in staring enviably.

Booker makes this tiny little sound, low in his throat, murky eyes staring wistfully at the shape of them illuminated in the moonlight and when Nile glances up it’s to see the open heart he exposes for her, and her chest aches so swiftly and completely that she thinks for a second that this is the closest she’ll ever come to annihilation.

“You know you could have that,” he says quietly, “if you wanted it.”

 _If you want me_.

Slowly, if only incrementally, something jostles loose behind Nile’s ribcage, unlocks and flutters and awakens after waiting _so_ long for him to be ready-

And it’s now that she becomes reticent, apprehensive, uneasy at the idea of upsetting this delicate line she’s become so adept at traversing. It might be funny, to come this far and stumble as the last hurdle is removed, silly of her to be so ill-prepared.

Nile isn't laughing.

 _No,_ _I can’t._ She stares at him with frantic eyes and can't quite believe that she's been waterboarded, lit alight and not in the figurative sense, respectfully bowed to Death each time on her way back into the living and never, in all of her long life, has she been this close to pleading.

_Not yet._

It’s strange how reassuring Booker's smile is, how quickly it becomes the newest, _softest_ , thing she’s ever seen.

\---

Enticing as it’s been to imagine, _fantasize_ , all of the many ways this moment could go, Nile doubts that her imagination could much compare to _this_ , as Booker brackets her thighs in his large hands, holds her flush against him as they half stumble, half fall into her tent, and it’s only instinct that has her twisting in mid-air to push him onto his back, cushioning the back of his head with her hands.

 _Impatient_.

That’s the only way to describe it, Nile has spent a great deal of time skirting around this and now that she’s here, sat in Booker’s lap while he stares at her, eyes half mast, a flush skimming high on his cheeks, all she wants is to do everything at once. To lick the line of sweat up his throat, to bare her teeth against his skin, to do her very best to mark him because apparently she’s limitless when she’s given the freedom to _touch_.

Her knees sink into the sleeping bag on either side of his waist, her hands falling naturally to his chest to start with, and Nile sits there in his lap, has her shadow laid out before her eager to accept anything she’s willing to give. _What I do to him_. What he allows her to do to him. What he'll give to her without reserve if only that she asks it.

“What do I do with you?” She hums, trailing a thumb along his cheekbone, the crease under his eyes, across his bottom lip, and gives him a smile when his teeth catch the pad. “Don’t be so impatient,” she accuses like a hypocrite and leans down until her head bumps gently against his, “I’ve waited a long time for this, so you’re going to let me enjoy it, aren’t you?”

Booker can’t really nod in this position, but he tries, and she laughs warmly, kisses his brow, lets him pull her in closer until she’s pressed down his front, and at this proximity Nile is reminded of the difference in size between them, the height and width that overcomes Nile’s own. The solid heft of Booker’s arms around her waist, reassuring and powerful, and trembling while he waits for her to have her fill of him.

_I’m sorry that I made you wait._

Booker opens up so _easily_ into her kiss, insistent and inviting, mouth hot and silky, and Nile takes no small amount of satisfaction from the achingly needy sound he makes, those _large_ hands splaying over her hips, curling in a manner that has Nile distracted at how they’d feel somewhere else.

“You,” he fumbles to confess when she moves her attention to the line of his jaw, groans when she indulges herself in the flutter of his pulse under her tongue “make me so _weak,_ mon coeur.”

And just like that, with one sentence, the reality of what is about to happen hits her. She stays there, takes a very _human_ moment to orient herself, breathing ragged while he affectionately rubs little circles along her sides. Nile wonders if Booker is thinking the same thing she is, if he’s confused by how monumental this is, the thickness in the air around them, and she gets her answer when he reaches up to stroke the contours of her face like he wants to learn the scriptures from it.

"No need to rush." Her lips graze his palm.

"Who said anything about rushing?" He's smiling again, soaking her in like he's preparing for a long drought without.

When it’s enough, and her skin is tingling, Nile dips her head towards Booker’s, and then she’s kissing him again, eyes falling closed, lips parting, and Booker’s tongue is in her mouth. Or hers is in his. _Ah_ , Nile doesn’t give a fuck which. All she does care for is that there’s heat in her abdomen, and she want’s to pull him closer, to convey that _yes_ this is perfect, _I have him_ , she doesn’t have to wait anymore, _all of this is mine._

She gets a hand back under his shirt, feels the play of muscles as he tenses, pushing up into her, hips shifting restlessly under the illusion that he’s incapable of getting away, and _there’s_ the physical proof of his desire for her, as if he’s ever given her a reason to question it. The shiver spiking through her spine also sends a hot pang of satisfaction coiling somewhere low that she’s the cause of his uneven breathing, scrabbling fingertips digging into her sides.

“Take this off.” She says, pulling lightly at the hem of his shirt, and while he’s distracted with scrambling to obey she does the same, and she’s about to tug at her sports bra in a rush when she hears this wounded groan. Pauses, lowers her hands and cocks her head, can’t resist grinning at his transfixed gaze, pupils following the heave of her chest and then commendably focusing on her face once more. “Do you need a minute?”

“I doubt a lifetime could be enough.” He says quietly.

And… _fucker_ , Nile thinks, grips his hair and pulls him up into a kiss because she can’t concentrate when she _loves_ him with her whole heart, and he says such sincere things without reserve now they’re both _here_ at the same finishing line at last.

“You,” she bites at his lower lip and refuses to soothe it because she hasn’t forgotten how her Sebastien likes to hurt under a loving touch, “know exactly what you do to me, don’t you.”

She licks into his mouth to destroy his answering grin, and she can feel his words trapped there, the _it’s only fair_ because she knows how easily she can ruin him in return. A level playing field. Nile’s hands move to start kneading into his hair, grasping, an aimless clench that rewards her with these beautiful, stuttering gasps as he moves to kiss along her throat. Regretfully, she pauses to lift her arms so he can slide her bra off, tossing it somewhere to the side and then she’s back with gently tugging the strands as he sinks his teeth into her bared shoulder, a tiny hiss escaping her when he grazes her collarbone and _fuck_ is she ready for him.

“Booker.” She sighs, digs her nails into the prominent bundles of muscle along his biceps in warning.

Booker, in all things, does exactly what Nile wants him to.

The air feels cool on her bare skin despite weeks of her griping about the humidity as he carefully peels her bra free and tosses it behind them, and it’s not nearly the only reason she presses into the warmth of his hands, arms thrown around his shoulders when the flat of his tongue _finally_ teases the tip of her breast, breath hot before his lips close around one of her nipples and Nile sighs again, but in satisfaction.

“That’s it, look at you Book,” she can feel his moan more than hear it, “you’re so good to me.”

They both get a little lost in it, Nile can feel him pressed _hard_ against the apex of her thigh as she calls him pretty things and rotates her hips slowly, feels her previous haste return with each swivel. Insatiable when she can feel the desperate way Booker can’t help himself from wanting to coax more from her, eager to please, tongue tracing around sensitive nerves over and over until the tension simmering in her core turns into a heady throb, the wet heat of his mouth dragging it from her in agonizing increments.

Nile reluctantly pulls his attention back up, admires the flush of his skin in the amber firelight where they’ve left the tent flap open, where they’re alone in the middle of nowhere and there’s nothing stopping Nile from taking her time with him. Her hands aren’t as gentle as they might be if Booker isn’t built like a brick wall, doesn’t press into her so fucking _eagerly_ as she reaches down to tug at the hemline of his trousers.

Possibly, in the first time of her immortal life, Nile feels like a teenager again, in this sudden haste to divest herself of the rest of her clothing, and it’s strange, to _laugh_ as she has to pitch to the side to do this ridiculous wiggle to pull her pants free, and she’s laughing and grinning against Booker’s lips as he does the same and then rolls over so his arms are caging her in.

There’s a look of contemplation on his face when there’s a natural pause, a tiny crease in his brow, and he’s staring at her like she’s something new, like she hasn’t been stuck in this state of being for three-hundred years. Fortunately, Nile has become fluent in reading Booker, and she almost laughs again as she reaches up to cup his face in her hands. “Still waiting for me to run?”

“The thought might have crossed my mind.” He admits as if it's troubling him more to doubt her than it does to actually experience it.

“Only crossed?” She fondly taps a finger against his temple. “I can hear the whirring from here.” He ducks his head and that’s not what she wants, so she hooks the soft hair at the nape of his neck and drags her nails softly until he shivers. “I’m staying, Sebastien.”

That seems to satisfy him, that vulnerable hurt closing over fast enough to give her whiplash and Nile lets out a shuddering breath as he runs calloused palms along her thighs, gentles them up higher on his waist, her body curving up to him, and Nile hasn’t got the patience for him to take her apart with that clever tongue. He was _right._ It’s been too long, and she’s edged with fire, and still she’s going to let him because he’s gazing at her with this _delirious_ love in his eyes and Nile is so gone on him.

The fingers he has on her leg begin to move back and forth across her skin, and Nile is about to bite at the painfully slow pace when it runs counter to the tense heat forming low in her belly. He pushes two fingers inside her and – before he can do more than push her thigh up further with his free hand – Nile tips her head back with a hot little sigh. She becomes dimly aware of the grip she has in his hair when he groans feverishly, but it’s a secondary thought to the feel of his tongue dragging up and down her centre while his fingers curve against a particularly sensitive spot that has her hips rise in protest.

Booker touches her like he’s been thinking about it for a lifetime, two, three. Because he has. Nile has too, and it feels out of place to be giddy with the thought, to make a sound that seems like the smallest of laughs, voice breaking at the end when his thumb grazes her clit deliberately in return.

“There, that’s it. _Yes_.” Nile finds herself muttering encouragement solely because he preens under her attention, seems to take his pleasure from hers and so Nile lets Booker leech it out with every sigh and whimper and whine, praises and adores him as a white, sharp heat coils in her stomach and holds on the precipice of releasing, “You’re doing so well for me.” Looks at him unfailingly through the wet fan of her lashes, pours what's left of her meagre focus into meeting the sear of his eyes, and there's blood pounding in her ears when she comes.

Booker works her through it, has her squirming before he finally withdraws, leaning back on his knees, lips red and wet and Nile-

Nile watches him starstruck.

“I love you,” she says dazedly, “rather a lot, truthfully. More than you think.”

He freezes, and Nile thinks this is the first time he stares at her in complete disbelief, and she can practically hear the excuses dripping off of his tongue. She’d thought that they were past this. That there’s still even a small fraction of him that’s reticent to accepting what she’s willing to give is unacceptable. It’s a matter of willpower, she decides, and that’s something Nile has always had in spades over him.

So, she fastens a leg around his waist, twists to roll them until Booker is lying out before her once more, and sets about proving her love with a reverent touch until it’s soaked into the leylines of his body.

\---

A long time back, before there was a Nile _and_ Booker, before they were what they’ve now become, Nile stands outside on the terrace of an apartment in Chicago wondering how, for all they claim to uphold secrecy as sacrosanct, Quynh has the best view of the city. She’d insisted on taking advantage of it while they wait for the hard drive they’d recently apprehended from less than scrupulous hands to run through the software.

Nile is taking the moment to just breathe.

Being in the States puts her in a morbid mood, even after all these years, after seeing her mom’s gravestone the one and only time, nothing can ever truly assuage the fractured piece of her that still feels like a lonely little girl without a parents guiding hand whenever she takes the first step _home_.

The last time she was here for a funeral, tucked at the back of the cemetery in a small nook between headstones, crouched disrespectfully when she should be _there, front and centre,_ saluting her brave, foolish brother as he's lowered into the ground. She wasn't Nile then. May have been Yenesei, or Volga, or it could have been Rhine, Nile can't honestly remember, and that of all things catches on the rim of her mind, every name wearing her down like a whetstone to the quick cut of a knife.

Remembers how she'd sworn to return the morning of her first deployment, had thumbed the tears from her mom's shimmering eyes and bolstered herself with the pride that replaces it.

Of all fucking things Nile finds tears in her own eyes, feels unformed for a heaving moment before her chest settles and she rubs a hand over her face.

This is why she doesn't revisit her home country anymore, not for pleasure at least. There's a minefield of broken promises strewn around her to navigate and there's not enough of _Nile_ left to survive a prolonged contact any longer.

As a distraction she thinks on another conundrum that has been bugging her to deflect the gnawing in her gut. It’s a simple thing, Nile hasn’t been able to work out until now why there’s been decidedly less bullets cutting into her like a hot knife sliding into her flesh, and though it would be nice to think that she’s becoming just _that_ good, humility won’t allow her to be that big headed.

The answer, she learnt this evening, is Booker. Or more she’d swung around a corner in a warehouse in the middle of a firefight, and realised that the hallway she’d torn down had been riddled with shots going wild. Logistically speaking, by the law of averages, at least _one_ bullet should have struck home in her retreating back, and yet she slid around the corner with only a minor ache in her knees.

Booker, on the other hand, leaks metal and blood from a dozen points of entry, collapses at her feet for a minute until he comes back with a gasp while she’s laying down covering fire.

She’d meant to call him on it then, and only hadn’t because she’d been too focused on getting them free without further casualties.

“Are you joining me or just lurking?” She calls out now instead and feels her perpetual shield and shadow draw beside her, fresh from the shower, hair still dripping down his neck.

It’s gotten too long again, strands of it brushing his cheeks. Nile stares without intending.

He shrugs, mistakes her scrutiny for an accusation. “I was admiring the view.”

It’s one of those ambiguous answers of his that makes her want to shake him sometimes. She checks his side instead to reassure a nagging voice in her head that demands she be certain he’s restored. “You know when I said that you had to have my back I didn’t mean it this literally?”

Judging by his quiet exhalation Nile knows that he thinks of Andy’s cave. Of his furtive promises, his word given so determinedly, and Nile feels this strange urge to reach up and push the hair back from his face so she can see those serious eyes.

She doesn’t. Because she isn’t certain in her ability to resist taking something that isn’t ready for her yet. Doesn't fully understand the need herself, and so she folds that notion up into fourths and carefully tucks it away to examine at some point in the future, when Nile can have faith that they’re _both_ ready.

“Are you going to stop taking all of the hits for me?” She asks curiously instead.

“No, probably not.” He leans on his elbows over the railing with her. “Are you going to order me to?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

That she frowns at. “Why?”

“Because I swore that I’d do whatever you asked of me and it would be nice not to disobey you already.”

“Typical,” she huffs and tries to appear chastising, “that’s where you draw the line.”

His lips twitch at the corners. “Aside from that, I’m yours to do with what you want.”

“You shouldn’t say that, Booker.” Nile says, admires the heat radiating through his shirt at such a proximity. “It’ll give people the wrong idea.”

He chuckles, and Nile becomes aware of how close their hands are, little fingers separated by nothing but air, and it’s tempting to twine them together.

“That’s the joy of being old, you lose the ability to give a shit what people think.” Booker says and his voice reverberates down Nile’s spine. “There’s very few people that I care to hear the opinion of.”

Before Nile can answer, can think of a way to ask _am I one of them_ , Quynh’s disembodied voice carries out from inside the apartment, _“Nile, you’re going to want to look at this.”_

“Give me a second.” She shouts back, takes one last glance at the beauty of the skyline, turns to go inside, and at the last second stops and looks over her shoulder. “Are you coming?”

Booker nods, a reassuring shadow over her shoulder, slotting into place like he was designed to be there, and Nile understands in that moment, that she’s never going to be lonely again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So what we haven't seen is Quynh, Nicky and Joe in the designated safe house waiting to join up, with a pile of cash and Quynh's favourite knife on the table because they've been watching these two be idiots for so long that it's become a long standing bet between them.


End file.
